


cause i was filled with poison but blessed with beauty and rage.

by serenitysea



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Dark!Skyeward, Darkfic, F/M, a little humor, smut implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:01:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3245513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenitysea/pseuds/serenitysea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She whirls around and plants a heel against his throat, pinning him to the exposed brick wall of the building. He's taller than she expected, with sharp brown eyes that catalogue far too many details and the kind of jaw that could make master sculptors cry.</p><p>"You got a death wish or are you just really stupid?"</p><p>He smirks and it does delightful things to his face (and seriously concerning things to her personal state of being). "Maybe I just like the rush."</p><p> </p><p>aka: <i>the one where skye knows <b>everything</b> and to hell with the consequences.</i> (skyeward, naturally.)</p><p>(darkfic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	cause i was filled with poison but blessed with beauty and rage.

**Author's Note:**

> \+ i'm gonna say this is probably a little bit more mature than my usual stuff, but there was a lot fueling it, so. read at your own risk.

The thing is.  
  
The thing is, knowledge is power.  
  
And Skye — well.  
  
Skye is _very_ powerful.  
  
*  
  
She doesn't care who she delivers to.  
  
It's a free for all, except she's the one parceling out the information — which means she has a leg up on everything. On _everyone_.  
  
She tried working with a partner, once.  
  
His name was Miles.  
  
Good man, Miles.  
  
It was too bad she had to kill him.  
  
(He was beginning to know too much.)  
  
*  
  
When you have power, you usually have access to a lot of things most people don't.  
  
So Skye — she doesn't exactly live in a van.  
  
She lives in a penthouse registered under a different name with an airtight fake identity and a serious distaste of _neighbors_. She rents out the other seventeen floors with additional false IDs and pays starving college wannabe actors a decent wage to come and pretend like they live there for the day. There is a contract they are forced to sign, a terrifying nondisclosure agreement she'd had drawn up by a lawyer ( _yeah_ , so he was dead too) some time ago, and a very strict set of parameters for who she chooses to fill those roles.  
  
A set of young students try to rent the thirteenth floor. She checks them out, and they're mostly clean. Almost too clean. She watches them on a bunch of closed circuit feeds and hacks into some security where she's _definitely_ not allowed to be.  
  
They're probably okay.  
  
But living in the tower is similar to signing a death sentence. And for some reason, she doesn't want to have to kill them later.  
  
(She tells herself that a double homicide is harder to make disappear than a random single.)  
  
She denies their application and decides that having a biochemist and an engineer would have been a serious mistake.  
  
Too much knowledge would have been dangerous.  
  
*  
  
There is a man named John Garrett.  
  
He calls himself the Clairvoyant.  
  
(Which she thinks is a freaking hell of a lot of nerve. He's not _that_ good, he just has a few moles in one of the pesky government agencies.)  
  
(Civilians. A little information and they think they're gods. What a mess.)  
  
She occasionally floats some choice tidbits his way because he pays generously and always thanks her in a sort of twisted way that she doesn't totally mind. (Once there'd been a garden of nightshade flowers planted at an observatory in her name. …A fake name, obviously, but it had been the thought that counted.)  
  
She doesn't mind dealing with him — even if some of the missions he runs are just _this_ side of her weird moral code (there will be no child casualties on her watch, or single parents who will leave orphans to survive in their wake; no one over the age of sixty five unless they had done something truly terrible) —and she doesn't help the major government agencies, no matter how much they beg — because she hates everything they stand for.  
  
Garrett hates his agency too, and makes an offer for her to join his organization as it truly frowns on the disorder and chaos in the world.  
  
Skye doesn't like the thought of being tied down to one particular group — even if Hydra seemed to have it a little more together than their peers these days — so she declines.  
  
Garrett has an op that goes FUBAR the next day.  
  
He never asks her again.  
  
*  
  
She's in a coffeehouse when she feels eyes on her.  
  
It has been a long time since anyone had been able to keep eyes on her and so she finds herself intrigued.  
  
(Perhaps this brazen fool had no idea what she was capable of. She did take great pains to keep her persona — innocent doe-eyed ingenue, passionately curious with long brown hair that curled in perfect spirals like the lies she expertly wove — intact. It wasn't unheard of for passerby to be drawn into her web.)  
  
(Usually she lifted their wallets and smartphones — more for kicks than actual need — to see if they had anything she wanted. But she lets them live. She's magnanimous that way.)  
  
Skye grabs her matcha latte and takes off in a leisurely stroll down the nearest alleyway.  
  
A distinct _lack_ of footsteps echo behind her.  
  
She rolls her eyes. This one thought they were actually good enough to go up against her.  
  
Cocky asshole.  
  
She whirls around and plants a heel against his throat, pinning him to the exposed brick wall of the building. He's taller than she expected, with sharp brown eyes that catalogue far too many details and the kind of jaw that could make master sculptors cry.  
  
"You got a death wish or are you just really stupid?"  
  
He smirks and it does delightful things to his face (and seriously concerning things to her personal state of being). "Maybe I just like the rush."  
  
And maybe she's having an off day, or maybe she just admires that someone has the balls to _dare_ to challenge her. (It's been an awfully long time since anyone has properly _challenged_ her. Ahem.)  
  
Skye tilts her head, considering the options. She doesn't actually want to kill him. _Strange_.  
  
But not entirely acceptable, so she moves quickly and jabs at the pressure points on his neck. Somehow — maybe by a the grace of a god she doesn't believe in — he twists out of the way at the last second, and her disabling hit never lands home.  
  
She steps back and nods appreciatively. "You're something, aren't you?"  
  
"You could take me on and find out," he suggests, absently wiping at the blood where her stiletto had tattooed a pretty line against his throat.  
  
"I could," she agrees, stealthily reaching in her back pocket and thumbing a series of commands on her phone to summon the police. "But where's the fun in that?"  
  
Sirens echo in the not-so-far distance and he glances backward to judge the best method of escape.  
  
She's gone before he finishes turning his head.  
  
*  
  
There's a sort of shake to her limbs when she walks back into the penthouse, the kind of jitters that tell her she needs to get laid and maybe take the edge off with a little creative murder.  
  
Unfortunately she doesn't trust anyone right now to scratch that itch (such a shame about Miles, really) so she has to scroll through her files to see who has gotten themselves on her blacklist recently.  
  
Skye didn't get to where she was because she was stupid and she already knows who the scruffy alleyway jerk is before she drinks her evening glass of champagne. She pulls up a file and reviews in the information she'd flagged two weeks prior.  
  
_Ward, Grant._  
  
The Clairvoyant's right hand man.  
  
They'd been near inseparable for over a decade as Garrett had raised the boy as if he were his own son. Ward had been instrumental in the death of at least two dozen politicians and public figures that stood in Hydra's way, though never implicated as his cover story was as straightedge agent of Shield seemed to withstand even the highest scrutiny.  
  
(Not hers, obviously. But then, hers wasn't the kind anyone could really expect to withstand.)  
  
She thinks about Garrett and what it would take to get him riled enough to send his number one man after her.  
  
Handily enough there is a name on her blacklist that can kill the two birds with one stone.  
  
_Cybertek_.  
  
She smiles serenely and reaches for the champagne at her hand. The bubbles fizz like liquid gold happiness as she belays instructions to level the building and all of its contents.  
  
*  
  
She's in the middle of browsing through the racks at an exclusive boutique on Rodeo Drive when a hand clamps down on her shoulder and drags her into the nearest dressing room.  
  
Despite allowing the initial shock to bleed into her expression, Skye is completely unsurprised. Garrett certainly wasted any time.  
  
Ward stands looming over her with the kind of barely leashed power in his body language that makes her very pleased indeed. But there's pleased and then there is _irritation_ that he'd interrupted her very enjoyable shopping spree.  
  
(Was there no decency in the world anymore?)  
  
She rolls her eyes and whips out the Beretta tucked in her Hermes Birkin bag. "Can I help you?" Skye raises her eyebrows, keeping the gun locked on his heart. "Or maybe you just felt like today should be your last day on this planet?"  
  
"Cybertek," Ward moves closer — at least until she thumbs off the safety and begins to squeeze the trigger ever so lightly. He puts his hands up, and stops moving. "They've been destroyed and they have something I need."  
  
"Well you're in luck," though she makes no move to lower the gun, "because I might have what you're looking for."  
  
"Oh," a downright _filthy_ smile widens across his face, "I'm counting on it."  
  
(And this was an angle she hadn't seen coming for at least another few days.)  
  
She throws her head back and laughs.  
  
*  
  
They don't go back to the Penthouse — she's got an itch that needs scratching but she's not a complete idiot — but to one of the nicer hotels in Beverly Hills. She checks in under a standing reservation by the name of Melinda Watts and keeps her hands firmly where they _shouldn't_ be.  
  
The concierge doesn't bat an eye, though the two older women at the next desk over do — and she can't help the laugh that bubbles out of her when Ward makes a slightly strangled noise as she gauges exactly what he's packing underneath those black jeans.  
  
He clamps a hand over her wrist with bruising intensity and the look he slants her hints of the kind of dark promise she didn't know she wanted. (Rare were the times when she fancied being the one not in control.)  
  
(Good man, that Miles.)  
  
She sighs inwardly.  
  
" _Don't_ ," he growls, pulling her to the elevators.  
  
Skye at least has the forethought to disable the cameras before the doors close.  
  
(Good thing, too.)  
  
*  
  
She wakes up deliciously sore and aching with the kind of hurt that makes her toes curl.  
  
Ward is pulling on his pants and taking deliberate care to keeps his eyes locked on her as he buttons the fly slowly.  
  
Skye stretches like a cat and the sheets fall away from her skin. "Ooops."  
  
"Cute," he leans down, kissing her lazily enough that she seriously debates the value of pulling him back down next to her instead of lining up her next onslaught. The FBI was getting far too cocky for their own good and she had a few covert ops to muck up before lunch.  
  
Skye finally pulls away, leaning back on her elbows. "Next time you're in town we should do this again."  
  
(She wouldn't mind waking up sore like this is all that she's getting at here.)  
  
"He told me you'd make me an offer."  
  
"Please," She scoffs. "You're not _that_ good." His eyes glint warningly and she grudgingly admits, "But you probably _could_ be, if you had a little more practice."  
  
Ward laughs and it transforms his entire appearance.  
  
(She has the impression he isn't often surprised and there is a small fluttering low in her belly not entirely unlike the one when he'd fisted her hands over her head and — _well_. Sidetracking never got anyone where they needed to go.)  
  
"If I say yes," Ward tips his head, leaning comfortably against the dresser to regard her with the kind of watchful eyes that make her shiver in places all over. "What do I get?"  
  
"That depends," the smile curls across her face. "On what you want."  
  
*  
  
Ward isn't anything like Miles.  
  
He doesn't argue with her as much as he does his own separate thing entirely — and he's not afraid to take the lashing she gives him after for stepping out of line. They yell and fight and _unleash_ fury the likes of which she has never seen before. (Not from experience and not from anything she's ever watched.)  
  
They have the kind of sex that destroys houses and hotel rooms and apartments and Skye needs to line up two dozen separate identities to recreate what they've demolished.  
  
(She doesn't regret it, though. Not for a second.)  
  
*  
  
"You have a base," Ward says, fingers combing through her hair as she lays sprawled atop him. "But you won't take me there. Why?"  
  
She isn't surprised that he's deduced none of the places they sleep are where she calls home. She wouldn't be wasting her time with an imbecile and Ward is certainly not lacking in intelligence.  
  
"I don't trust you." Skye doesn't bother softening the blow.  
  
She and Ward deal in absolutes and she isn't going to dance around it now, just because they're naked more often than not.  
  
The hand in her hair tightens slightly before relaxing. "I haven't proved myself yet?" He jokingly asks, brushing a thumb over her lip gently.  
  
"No," Skye answers honestly. "Garrett is still alive."  
  
Ward immediately stills and she sighs inwardly, even as she reaches for the gun under her pillow.  
  
In the blink of an eye, they've both locked weapons on each other — an act slightly undercut by the fact that they're stark naked.  
  
She laughs shortly and rolls her eyes. It's wrong that this is what is doing it for her right now. Then she sees Ward's eyes lower and darken.  
  
(Well, well. Seems like she isn't the only one.)  
  
*  
  
There's blood dripping into the crisp white of her blazer and she glares up at the balcony, where a sniper's rifle glints in the sunlight.  
  
"Dammit, Ward."  
  
She knows he can read her lips through the scope and turns her back on him, not even flinching as the next series of bullets ricochet off her heels.  
  
"Do you _mind_?" She throws her hands up angrily, and gives him the finger. "Some of us are trying to _work_ here."  
  
There's a bunch of dirty politicians in the warehouse to her left and she's going to set the place on fire (literally) to knock them out of the way.  
  
Their policies are crap and honestly what they're doing in support of black market child trafficking is despicable enough that she's already targeted their surviving families to take the hit.  
  
There's a thud behind her and then a hand around her throat, and this time it's Ward slamming her into the wall behind them.  
  
"Kinky," Skye chokes out, fluttering her lashes dramatically.  
  
(There's absolutely no reason at all why her heart is suddenly beating a little faster.)  
  
"Why didn't you tell me?" He demands through gritted teeth. (She has a moment of pity for his dentist.) There is only one thing that would make him this unreasonable. He must have found her cache of information on Garrett.  
  
(Which in his defense, she _had_ left almost in plain view. But she'd had her reasons then, and she stands by those reasons now, even if said reasons are making her rethink certain recent events.)  
  
She takes in the barely restrained fury in his eyes and the way he isn't checking the strength of the hand currently cutting off her oxygen. Even as black dots are dancing in her vision, she can laugh and so she does —  
  
Knowledge is power, after all.  
  
And Skye, well.  
  
She's very powerful.  
  
"That he killed your family?" The hand loosens ever so lightly, and she forces herself not to greedily inhale sweet, fresh air. "You wouldn't have believed me."  
  
Ward unclenches his fist and she openly gasps, while taking great pains to ensure that she slides directly down the length of his body. His pupils are blown with anger and something else — the same something else that she knows is shining bright and hot in her own eyes — when he lowers his head and kisses her with the kind of staggering intensity that got them nearly kicked out of the Beverly Wilshire.  
  
Skye figures it's kind of par for the course when she thumbs the detonator in her pocket, sending the building up in flames.  
  
They stumble once from the impact and she glances up at the fiery debris raining down with the kind of fondness most people reserve for small children and fluffy animals.  
  
(So she's a total sucker for chaos. What of it?)  
  
"I took care of him," Ward mutters, lifting his head to gaze with approval at the grave of previously said dirty politicians.  
  
"I know," Skye reaches a hand up to cup his jaw, brushing a thumb over his chin. "It's about time."  
  
(But this isn't a subject that he look at with humor — at least, not yet anyway.)  
  
He grips her chin with force. "You got a death wish?"  
  
"No." Skye curls her free hand around his neck, sliding her fingers into his hair and almost purring in satisfaction when she feels his hand lock on the curve of her waist. "I just really like the rush."  
  
*

**Author's Note:**

> \+ [tumblr](http://b-isforbombshell.tumblr.com)  
> \+ title comes from lana del ray's _ultraviolence_.


End file.
